I think memes are a lot like a group of kids cracking yo mama jokes. It starts with "statement" then the next guy gives "better, funnier, snarkier statement" and the next guy gives "sort of funny, in the theme, but a little lame statement" and everybody groans but laughs anyway.
So, memes are fun mental games that strengthen a feeling of community and camaraderie. They can be awesome, and they can deteriorate into poop jokes fairly quickly.
luckyshirt
· 9 months ago
I've used that EXACT "yo mama" analogy. How funny.
I think they're a natural byproduct of the kind of personality clustering that happens on Twitter and Tumblr. We share similar tastes in terms of humor and content, so it stands to reason that people will take something, add their personality to it, and put it back into the system with the belief that it will be appreciated.
...and of COURSE people will run it into the ground until it's not funny... then run it for another two days.
Joe Schmitt
· 9 months ago
I agree. They are fun games. The thing that I think is great about some of the more popular ones is how some really funny stuff always crops up from more than just the usual Favrd suspects. Of course there are plenty in the usual suspects who feel like the joke is funny while they make it, but when they are done everyone else should be. I fell like give people a chance. Some people can be funny if given the structure of a meme, but have a hard time finding the funny from the random bits in their life. Sure there's lots of repeats and variations in the most popular memes, but some that's just how it works.
And without memes, there's plenty of geniunely hilarious people I might never have found. I'm thinking in particular of @liabo, who came from out of nowhere with "C'mon Dick Cheney, let's go hunting! #6wordepitaph"
CranberryPerson
· 9 months ago
Oh, see, I think I am just working off a different perception of what a meme is. I enjoy reading people spinning different ideas out of a common theme.
CranberryPerson
· 9 months ago
I am fascinated by memetics in general, and, as it pertains to me, the impact they have on jurisprudence. For example, the concept of stare decisis is not, on strict terms, directly tied to memetics, but there are certainly some memetic principles at work there. By way of illustration, some of the most well-known Supreme Court First Amendment opinions are extremely meme-driven, or contain important memes therein, such as Potter Stewarts "I know it when I see it" as pertaining to pornography, and Holmes' "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre" (which is often misquoted as simple "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" which is of course perfectly legal so long as there is a fire in the theatre, hence the "falsely.") The legal world is, without a doubt, bursting at the seams with memes.
And for my personal opinion on memes on the internet? Hate them, and have little use for them. It's not to say that people can't be clever and that it's not sometimes fun to participate in common themes, but too often people just post the meme and, apparently, want you to think it's special. That is to say, people who use memes like puns, but without going through the exercise of thinking up a pun.
luckyshirt
· 9 months ago
So you dislike memes because of the lack of effort some people put into their contributions?
Why not apply that same principal to all posts? Why are meme-related submissions held to a higher standard, while posts like "AAAUUUGHH I hate today." are tolerated?
CranberryPerson
· 9 months ago
I try to apply the same standard, but I guess I feel like the person who posts "AAAUUUGHHH I hate today" really probably does hate the way his or her day is going, so there is some sort of substance there, even if it's not quite Gettysburg Address type quality of expression. But if someone types NINJA PIRATES YUM BACON CHUCK NORRIS you have no idea if they really enjoy bacon or have even seen "Invasion USA"
CranberryPerson
· 9 months ago
But, you know, I tweet about dudes adjusting their dongs on the bus, so I tend to feel goofy discussing these things as though I have any sort of unimpeachable integrity.
Joe Schmitt
· 9 months ago
Gettysburg Address? Makes me think maybe Lincoln would have been great at Twitter. Probably make Favrd more than @hotdogsladies
ronbailey
· 9 months ago
I'm OK with the whole meme thing, for one reason: sense of community. Almost every time we've had a meme-storm blow through twitterland, I've met new people, gained new followers, and found new people TO follow myself. For an outsider looking in, it's just a big open door to join the discussion.
Having said that, it is true that memes drag on much longer than they should, and most of the fun happens in the first twenty minutes or so. But overall, I like 'em.
bluejaypr
· 9 months ago
Forgive me if I've misinterpreted Mr Dawkins but I believe the concept of "meme" essentially is a way to quantify ideas and allow them to be studied scientifically. Similar to Malcolm Gladwell's concepts of tracing fads in "The Tipping Point". I think memetics is very useful to objectify ideas and cultural traditions in order to analyze how they pervade societies. It gives a person the ability to remove the emotional aspect and really figure out the "how" cultural ideas and norms are passed on to avoid the often inevitable debates about right or wrong that happen when you're looking at sometimes competing ideologies (or memes).
What I think is fascinating in this area the hashtags on Twitter that allow you to follow trending of discussion topics which are like discreet memes, which I think is like instant memetics without all the messy and time consuming research.
seemsArtless
· 9 months ago
Just realized that the string "meme" is perfect, as it is "me" amongst all the other "me"s out there. And to me that is the value of a meme, it provides a way people can feel like they belong to a group.
seemsArtless
· 9 months ago
Oh yeah, and it you're cool like me, you'll figure out which browser tab you have open right now is the oddest or most unlikely, and Twitter about it with the hash tag #oddtab
Tom Bennett
· 9 months ago
Memes provide interim mental "collecting places" where a group can gather. As a concept enters the public mind, it takes time and negotiation for that idea to gel and form its outer boundaries. Memes are the new shiny toy, where we all get to ooh and aah, and by playing with them they either lose their luster, or become a vetted concept that can proceed. Once a meme has gotten to John Stewart, or God forbid Diane Sawyer, it has graduated, and become something else entirely.
Meme-ness is energy.
scott
· 9 months ago
What I think is especially interesting (as a teacher, myself) is that there are memes that live long hearty lives solely ensconced in the confines of the web. It's interesting to see the faces in a room - and there are never more than a few unless it's a group aged largely under 25, and those people "get" such things - light up when something that was funny as a meme is brought up in class. I mean, the number of people even now in a college classroom who understand when a speaker says "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" tends to be small. It illustrates, I think, that the assumption that all young people are completely plugged in (there were a couple of videos of a 60 Minutes show on "Millennials" that went into detail -- they're on YouTube) isn't as true as it seems. "These young kids and their newfangled stuff" doesn't always include the group knowledge we, as older people, assume it does.
giromide
· 9 months ago
140 characters is already a tight constraint on clever writing. Add a meme to this, and you are separating the wheat from the chaff.
There will always be meme backlash (@phyllisstein), and I can't help but think that meme backlash is itself a meme.
Of course, this is coming from a Twitter user who has rocked quite a few memes. Rocked them hard. Like a rock. Rock.
Joe Schmitt
· 9 months ago
@giromide - you are always a top meme contributor.
billygoat
· 9 months ago
To me, a meme is like an inside joke -- it's only funny to you & your friends. And maybe that's why some people hate them. But I enjoy them because on Twitter other people can discover the joke, participate, and become part of the group of friends that get it.
Yohagan
· 9 months ago
Talk of memes existed before online social media. The definition has narrowed and become too much of a construct. A meme is without the forethought of construct. I think a meme is better described as an idea molecule - made up of idea atoms. They are viral molecules that are tiny building blocks of our social consciousness, that we as a group, as groups, and as sub-groups mold, define and spread through the mental fabric of society like germs, some good, some bad, all building blocks.
We pass and receive memes like we pass and receive bacteria; a yellow smiley face, a movie quote, a political lie, a social truth, deconstruction and mass distractions. achoo. ahem.
courtney
· 9 months ago
I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or another, but I can think of some pros and cons regarding memes.
PRO:
- Often memes exist for purely generous purposes. #followfriday being an obvious example. It's nice to shout out to the universe the names of people you think are awesome, and they can then reap the benefits by getting more people to "hear" their awesomeness.
PRO:
- They can serve to filter out topics that are or are not of interest to you. Say I'm not interested in the minutia of SXSW. When scanning my Twitterific, if I see said "meme" (if that can be described as a meme), I can ignore and move on. Similarly, if I'm a LOST fan and I wanna see what other peeps have to say about it, I can keep an eye out for that tag (again, I'm not sure if certain tags constitute memes, but...)
PRO:
- Memes can allow people to flex their creative-wit muscles, to see what they can come up with to make others laugh, smirk or say "why didn't I think of that?"
CON:
- Sometimes a meme can run its course pretty quickly, but Twitterers keep it going anyway, at which point it's merely tiresome and exhausting to follow. Beating a dead meme, you might say.
irreverend
· 9 months ago
If Twitter is a giant jazz jam, memes are the riffs that entice us to bring our trumpets and horns (or in our case, butt trumpets and kazoos) into a great big smoky room to make some noise with friends. Yeah, there's an element of juvenile inside-joke-ishness, but it's also about nurturing a micro-community.
That said, I tend to abstain. Not sure why. I guess I just like playing with myself. I mean, by myself. Musical masturbation meme, anyone? #bandcamp
luckyshirt
· 9 months ago
I love this metaphor so hard. Uh, something something french horn. OK, that one got away from me. #bandcamp?
Thanks.
courtney
· 9 months ago
Um, upon further reflection, I may have not properly addressed the topic of "memes". Oh well. I hope you didn't mind reading my blather, anyway.
luckyshirt
· 9 months ago
For my purposed, you did. That was an excellent post. Thank you.
luckyshirt
· 9 months ago
You guys are ALL awesome. Thank you. It seems like the general sentiment is:
Memes (in the Twitter or Tumblr sense of the word) can be entertaining and can serve to foster community on social networks, but carry with them an inherent risk of continued circulation beyond their expiration date.
I think it could be argued that the aforementioned expiration date is subjective, as there are still some remote tribes who have yet to be exposed to the "YO DAWG" meme.
I think memes like these meet resistance when people want to apply their own ideas about when something has stopped being funny to an entire network. We enter dangerous territory when we discourage comments because they rely on prepackaged humor. After all, much of what happens here borrows from other jokes or ideas. Maybe the addition of the hashtag could be viewed as a sort of admission of that fact.
I also believe that some people dislike memes because of their effect on favrd or even a user's timeline. Simply put: it is harder to be heard in the meme storms, ESPECIALLY when you are not participating. That can be frustrating for someone who wants to express something during such a time.
skye
· 9 months ago
I thought one of the most important aspects of a meme was it's ability to evolve in the hands of those participating in it. As I understand it, the origin of meme comes from the idea of a gene, so the nature of it implies there should be some genetic residue of the original which gets passed along as it evolves. I would posit that just a funny saying or quote in and of itself is no meme. The "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" meme was a meme for the fact that it was a Photoshop meme (which many internet memes are, or an even better example of leveraging the Internet medium would be the YTMND.com line of meme'ery). The more recent "Yo Dawg, I heard you like..." meme is much more along the lines of the "your momma's so fat" example. Which I would say "your momma" jokes are no meme, due to the fact there's nothing "to get," there is no genetic-granule-of-inside-jokeiness of which a posteriori knowledge is required in order to understand/participate/advance the meme. The key points being, the experience of the kernel of origin and the evolution from said kernel. SUCK ON DAT KNOWLEDGE BITCHES! Sorry, no offense meant, that's just how i tend to sign off on really great discussions on the interwebz.
All Comments
So, memes are fun mental games that strengthen a feeling of community and camaraderie.
They can be awesome, and they can deteriorate into poop jokes fairly quickly.
I think they're a natural byproduct of the kind of personality clustering that happens on Twitter and Tumblr. We share similar tastes in terms of humor and content, so it stands to reason that people will take something, add their personality to it, and put it back into the system with the belief that it will be appreciated.
...and of COURSE people will run it into the ground until it's not funny... then run it for another two days.
And without memes, there's plenty of geniunely hilarious people I might never have found. I'm thinking in particular of @liabo, who came from out of nowhere with "C'mon Dick Cheney, let's go hunting! #6wordepitaph"
And for my personal opinion on memes on the internet? Hate them, and have little use for them. It's not to say that people can't be clever and that it's not sometimes fun to participate in common themes, but too often people just post the meme and, apparently, want you to think it's special. That is to say, people who use memes like puns, but without going through the exercise of thinking up a pun.
Why not apply that same principal to all posts? Why are meme-related submissions held to a higher standard, while posts like "AAAUUUGHH I hate today." are tolerated?
Having said that, it is true that memes drag on much longer than they should, and most of the fun happens in the first twenty minutes or so. But overall, I like 'em.
What I think is fascinating in this area the hashtags on Twitter that allow you to follow trending of discussion topics which are like discreet memes, which I think is like instant memetics without all the messy and time consuming research.
Meme-ness is energy.
There will always be meme backlash (@phyllisstein), and I can't help but think that meme backlash is itself a meme.
Of course, this is coming from a Twitter user who has rocked quite a few memes. Rocked them hard. Like a rock. Rock.
We pass and receive memes like we pass and receive bacteria; a yellow smiley face, a movie quote, a political lie, a social truth, deconstruction and mass distractions. achoo. ahem.
PRO:
- Often memes exist for purely generous purposes. #followfriday being an obvious example. It's nice to shout out to the universe the names of people you think are awesome, and they can then reap the benefits by getting more people to "hear" their awesomeness.
PRO:
- They can serve to filter out topics that are or are not of interest to you. Say I'm not interested in the minutia of SXSW. When scanning my Twitterific, if I see said "meme" (if that can be described as a meme), I can ignore and move on. Similarly, if I'm a LOST fan and I wanna see what other peeps have to say about it, I can keep an eye out for that tag (again, I'm not sure if certain tags constitute memes, but...)
PRO:
- Memes can allow people to flex their creative-wit muscles, to see what they can come up with to make others laugh, smirk or say "why didn't I think of that?"
CON:
- Sometimes a meme can run its course pretty quickly, but Twitterers keep it going anyway, at which point it's merely tiresome and exhausting to follow. Beating a dead meme, you might say.
That said, I tend to abstain. Not sure why. I guess I just like playing with myself. I mean, by myself. Musical masturbation meme, anyone? #bandcamp
Thanks.
Memes (in the Twitter or Tumblr sense of the word) can be entertaining and can serve to foster community on social networks, but carry with them an inherent risk of continued circulation beyond their expiration date.
I think it could be argued that the aforementioned expiration date is subjective, as there are still some remote tribes who have yet to be exposed to the "YO DAWG" meme.
I think memes like these meet resistance when people want to apply their own ideas about when something has stopped being funny to an entire network. We enter dangerous territory when we discourage comments because they rely on prepackaged humor. After all, much of what happens here borrows from other jokes or ideas. Maybe the addition of the hashtag could be viewed as a sort of admission of that fact.
I also believe that some people dislike memes because of their effect on favrd or even a user's timeline. Simply put: it is harder to be heard in the meme storms, ESPECIALLY when you are not participating. That can be frustrating for someone who wants to express something during such a time.